Barbara Band's Reading List

"There are lots of books to choose from in this series. I tend to veer towards books that go against stereotypes, because I think it’s really important that we don’t put stereotypical images in front of young children all the time. They pick up these messages so quickly from nursery, from the media, from the things they see in books. So I’ve gone for Where’s Mrs T-Rex? because animals in books are often male, especially if they’re strong animals. If you think about books that feature lions, they’re not lionesses. I know a lion looks wonderful with his mane, you can do lovely illustration with them, but we don’t have many books with lionesses even though they’re the ones who hunt. To get away from stereotypes, for me this baby book pick was a toss up between Where’s Mrs T-Rex? and Where’s Mr Unicorn? This is a small board book, which is ideal to start babies off with because when you’ve got a baby on your lap you haven’t got a lot of room. Sometimes it can be quite a juggling act to have a bigger book and the baby reaching out, because they all want to touch the book. So this is ideal for when baby is sitting on your lap and also for babies to hold themselves. It’s got flaps in it. Very little children, from a few months old, soon learn that if you lift the flap you’ll find something underneath. A lot of flap books tear after a few times of handling, and then you lose that excitement of lifting the flap, but in this series the flaps are made of felt so they won’t tear. At the end of the book there’s a surprise – a mirror – and of course babies love to see themselves in mirrors. Yes, another thing I like about these books is that they’re very colourful, and the drawings are simplistic. So that’s really nice for very small babies whose vision is developing. It’s brilliant."

"Emily Gravett is one of my favourite illustrators and authors. This book is different from the others that I have selected because it is a story. It’s a very simple and repetitive story and if you break down the language in it there are not a lot of words used. It’s about a little girl who has a toy monkey. She says “monkey and me, monkey and me we went to see…” and on the next page is the animal they go to see. Emily’s got a wonderful way of using the space on the page. Once you’ve read it, you realise that the girl is copying the actions of the animal they are off to see. For example, when it’s kangaroo, she’s tucked monkey down her t-shirt like in a pouch. At the end she goes home to eat but she falls asleep and there’s an actual monkey who steals her banana. So it’s got a fun element to it and the drawings are wonderful. I’ve got three grandchildren and it’s been a firm favourite with all of them. Recently I’ve been reading it to the 18 month old and she loves it. It’s not too long a story, so when babies get a little bit older they will sit and listen to it. You can make it exciting by making noises and movements for the animals. Or it can be read very quietly and slowly, and that repetitive language is very calming so you can read it at bedtime. It’s a lovely book to read at the end of the day when you want to wind them down before they go to bed. Sometimes when I’m reading to the younger children I have to remember that I’m trying to get them relaxed and not wind them up, and this book you can do both with. It’s just a lovely book to read aloud. It is, and identifying animals. Like most baby books, if you look beyond the words there’s a lot you can do with them."

"Again, this is a story, and it’s got that rhyming language. It’s a story about diversity and being different. You need to introduce this to children from a young age, because the world that very small children interact with may not be very diverse. This book is simple to read with younger children and it’s got that nice rhyming text but also lots of detail in the pictures. There are people that are tall and people that are short; actually the tall character is not a person, it’s a giraffe who is taking books off the top shelf for the little girl who is small. So it’s a book that will grow with a child. If you can choose books that grow with children, that’s fantastic. It’s better value for money to start with, you don’t really want to buy a book that they are not interested in a month later. With this book, as the child gets older you can start talking about more and more details and the differences between people. You can bring in different aspects of society when it’s appropriate to do so for the age of the child. Yes, and when you have books that a child has grown up with, books that are familiar to them, they’ll often pick those at bedtime. If they’ve had a grumpy day, which they all have from time to time, and they just want to sit and cuddle, sometimes they want that familiar book. So it’s a comfort read, but also you can extend the reading to match their age and what they can take in from the story. I love it, it’s a fantastic book for little children."

"I cannot remember where I first came across these books, but I absolutely adore them. There are about 14 books in the series and they’re all brilliant. All the grandchildren from age eight downwards still love them. The youngest one, who is 18 months, goes to nursery and I chose My Busy Day because it is set in a nursery. You’ve got the children arriving, and they’re having their breakfast in the nursery. Then you’ve got playtime outside, they go off to visit a farm and they do painting, water play, storytime, all those familiar activities. There are no words in it, it’s all illustrations. It’s a board book, but it’s a slightly larger format. There are lots of details in the pictures but I’ve found children from around 12 months upwards like looking at them. It’s amazing what little children can spot, they spot things that you don’t see at all, the smallest thing like the dog hiding behind a barrel. When I sit and read this book with my granddaughter she recognises things. I relate it to what she does in her day, does she go outside and play, does she nap like the little girl who’s always asleep in each of the pictures? At the front of each of these books there are 15 or so characters that then feature on each double-page spread. They’ve got the same clothes on so you can spot them, but they’re doing something different on each page. One of the other Wimmelbooks is Animals Around the World by Stefan Lohr and there’s a carrier pigeon. In the first picture, somebody has given it a letter and then on each of the other pages you have to spot this bird with the letter, then in the last picture the letter’s being handed over. I do different things with each grandchild with these books. With older children like my five year old grandson, he loves spotting things. We don’t spot all 15 characters because we’d be there for hours, we choose three or four things to spot in each picture. After a while they know where all the 15 characters are so you can extend that by choosing something yourself within the picture, something tucked in a corner and ask them to find it. If you ask them, for example, to find the sheep that’s rolling on the ground, that helps to develop their observational skills. For my eight year old grandchild I thought she would have grown out of these books by now but she sits with them and makes up stories with the people on the pages, with herself in the stories. The other thing is these books are interesting for adults to look at as well. Children do pick the same books all the time and when you’ve read the same book every day for six months, you think “oh, not this book again”. But these books have touches of humour in the pictures, there’s lots to talk about, and they are lovely illustrations so you find yourself not getting bored with them. You have to be a bit careful, because if you get bored that will come across when you’re reading. We don’t want children to be bored with reading, we want them to think of it as an exciting adventure every time we pick up a book. There is a huge amount you could do with them. You can do counting, you can talk about what’s happening on the pages, what children are doing in the pictures. This series has been my go-to gift for the children in my life that I buy presents for. I think these books should be more widely known because they’re brilliant, and excellent value for money as well. Sign up here for our newsletter featuring the best children’s and young adult books, as recommended by authors, teachers, librarians and, of course, kids. It was really hard to choose just five. I’ve not gone for the firm favourites that everybody knows. That’s not because they’re not any good, I just felt this was an opportunity to introduce slightly different books to parents. In terms of reading for babies I would just say it’s meant to be a fun time for you and the baby, so find something that you can both engage with and relax. As I said earlier, there’s no right or wrong way to read a book to a baby, but do read to them, every day."